1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for feeding a sheet using edge guides for guiding the lateral edges of the sheet, and more particularly to a technique of reducing a space required for accommodating the apparatus for feeding a sheet.
2. Description of the Related Art
An apparatus for feeding a sheet (hereinafter, referred to as “sheet feeder”) is for use in various applications. One of the applications is an apparatus for forming an image (hereinafter, referred to as “image forming apparatus”) such as a printer. Such a sheet feeder for use in combination with such an image forming apparatus is categorized into one for use in manual feed, and one for use in auto feed. The auto feed allows stacked sheets to be separated, to thereby feed individual sheets one by one.
Such a sheet feeder allows a feeding of a sheet using edge guides guiding the lateral edges of the sheet to be fed.
More particularly, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No, Hei 10-291696, for example, such a sheet feeder is configured to include: a feeder tray displaceable to a selected one of a retracted position and an unfolded position relative to an image forming apparatus, and having a sheet-loaded plane on which the sheet to be fed to the image forming apparatus is to be loaded; and a pair of edge guides disposed at the sheet-loaded plane, having a pair of corresponding respective side walls co-extending along a feeding direction of the sheet in opposed relation with each other, to thereby guide lateral edges of the sheet.
An example of such a sheet feeder is further configured such that the edge guides are movable relative to each other in a direction perpendicular to the feeding direction of the sheet, to thereby control the width of a sheet travel path on the sheet-loaded plane.
For accommodating such a sheet feeder, an example of the image forming apparatus is configured to have an exposed recess formed in a body panel of the image forming apparatus at a position in conformity with a space in which the edge guides are to be displaced.
In this example, once the feeder tray is brought into the retracted position relative to the image forming apparatus, the edge guides are retracted or accommodated within the recess. For the reason, the image forming apparatus is required to be configured such that the recess is dimensioned to avoid the edge guides from abutting the body panel of the image forming apparatus, irrespective of where the edge guides are positioned.